PESHAWAR, Jan 17: Police in Swat have arrested a man who is said to have confessed to his role in high-profile terrorist attacks, including an attempt to kill President Pervez Musharraf and a suicide bomb attack on the US Consulate in Karachi.

A senior police official told Dawn that Mohammad Jamil Memon had been detained in Swat in December on some suspicion, but his interrogation led investigators to believe that he was not an ordinary criminal.

A senior investigator said it was a Suzuki car in Memon's possession that led them to his past activities including the attack on the motorcade of President Musharraf and the US Consulate bombing in Karachi.

The car was found to have been snatched in Karachi in September last year and a case was registered with the Korangi police. Son of Usman Ghani Memon of Nazimabad, Jamil belonged to the militant Harkatul Mujahideen Al Alaami organization and had received training in terrorist activities in Afghanistan, the official said.

"The boy is highly intelligent and a hardened militant. It took quite some time to soften himself", the investigator said. Deputy Inspector-General (Malakand) Attaullah Wazir, who commands the police in the northern districts of the NWFP, confirmed the arrest of Jamil Memon.

He said that Jamil continued to dodge investigators until he was confronted with information provided by the Crime Investigation Department, Karachi. Mr Wazir said that Jamil had told investigators that he was an expert in attaching switches to explosives and had done that job for the attack on President Musharraf's motorcade in Karachi.

A remote-controlled device attached to explosives in a van parked on Sharea Faisal, the route of President Musharraf's motorcade on April 26, 2002, failed to work and was subsequently detected and defused.

Jamil and three others were subsequently charged with plotting to kill Gen Musharraf. While the 25-year-old Hafiz-i-Quran went underground, his three accomplices, Mohammad Imran Bhai, Hanif Ayub and Ashraf, were arrested and tried in 2003.

Imran and Ayub were jailed for 10 years for their involvement in the failed attempt on Gen Musharraf and were sentenced to death in the case of suicide bombing on US Consulate in Karachi on June 14, 2002, that had killed 14 Pakistanis.

Jamil told investigators he had provided the switches for explosives used in both the attacks. As the police in Karachi looked for him, Jamil snatched a car and drove all the way to Swat to meet other comrades, the investigator said.

During a raid on Jamil's hideout in Swat, Mr Wazir said, police found a computer hard disc that contained information about poisonous chemical agent anthrax and on making dirty bombs.

The official said that police also recovered from Jamil a manual in Urdu with detailed instructions on how to behave during interrogation if caught and how to blend in an area.

"Drown the investigators in talks about Jihad in Kashmir and Afghanistan. Make them confused, beat about the bush," read the lesson number one, according to the investigator who has seen the two-page guide on surviving interrogation.

"The interrogators use sleep deprivation as a way of torture. They make you eat more so that you get sleepy. Eat less so that you don't get sleepy," is the second lesson.

"They make you stand for a long time that causes to slow down blood circulation. Try and ask to go to the toilet as often as you can so that the blood continues to circulate and you are not tired," is the third lesson.

Similarly, the investigator said, there were instructions on how to live in jail without mixing with other jail inmates to avoid betraying vital information. "This just goes to show how sophisticated have the militants become to deal with possible capture and interrogation", the investigator said.

Arman Sabir adds from Karachi: Jamil Memon has been brought to Karachi from Swat for investigation and his alleged link with one of the most wanted Al Qaeda suspects in Pakistan, besides his involvement in a carjacking case and in the failed attack on President Musharraf.

Well-placed sources in security agencies said they believed that Jamil was in contact with Libyan national Abu Al Faraj, one of the most wanted Al Qaeda operatives. They also believe that Abu Faraj is somewhere in Pakistan and Jamil may be of help in tracking him down.

The sources said that Jamil had arranged a meeting between Karman Atif of Harkatul Mujahideen Al Alaami (in detention) and Abu Al Faraj, in which matters of providing manpower and expertise for terrorist attacks in and outside Pakistan were discussed.

However, the investigators have not been able to find which country they plotted to attack. They said that Jamil had a lot of students to whom he had imparted training in sabotage activities.

The sources said that Abu Faraj wanted to use the manpower of Harkatul Mujahideen for carrying out tasks of Al Qaeda. "We are investigating Jamil Memon to know the whereabouts of Abu Faraj but he is a hardcore activist and a hard nut to crack. We hope we will get useful information about his accomplices and be able to net in some big shots", the sources said.